Illegal hunting: the true story of a vile and silent hunting

Night poaching with deadly weapons on a December night which is strangely hot.

A mist comes out from the Crèmera, the creek at the bottom of the valley.The forest at the two sides is blurred, despite the moonlight.

Two guys compete to recognize the night raptors’ voices. They are few metres away from a dark green jeep. They are park rangers on their anti-poaching service. They move silently, walking at the edge of the forest: dressed in green, they are practically invisible.

Less than one kilometre away, their chief has just finished dining with his family, and he is sweet to his young daughter, he calms down his dog who is barking to the presences in the forest around. He gets a call on the cellular service.

The guys down in the forest have heard something, and with their night sight they have seen two people stationed by the creek, waiting for the wild boars. The park rangers approach the two men, who hear them coming and throw the weapons in the wood. But the ranger have the night sight and spot the weapons: not guns, but crossbows with a laser pointer, deadly and silent.The two men have a hard time claiming they were only taking a walk in the forest or running after an escaped horse.

They are part of the staff of a nearby restaurant, on the other side of the forest. Wild boar on the menu, and the origin seems quite clear. The two men are taken away by the rangers, while the crossbows will enrich the collection of weapons used for poaching in the forest. For the rangers it’s going to be a long night, due to the usual formalities. On the days before Christmas the Attorney General’s Offices are pretty unguarded, and judges give priority to homicides, not to simple and cruel poaching.The two poachers with crossobows are guilty and will be prosecuted. The restaurant owner, who is the instigator, will say he barely knows them, and then he will replace them with other two poachers.

The rangers will have to catch all the others poachers, the ones who send the dogs into the park and then shoot everything comes out; the ones who use creolin or naphtha to divert the wild boars’ sens of smell: the ones who use steel wires, that condemn animals to a slow death. Other go on their hunting trip.This really happened in the Valli del Sorbo (Sorbo valleys), in the Parco di Veio (Rome province).